Buddhist Bumper Stickers

Serious Stuff

• Things are not as they seem; nor are they otherwise.
• Right speech doesn't just mean what you say to others, but what you say to yourself.
• Thoughts are wonderful servants, but poor masters.
• Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
• The mind is like the open, empty, spacious sky. All phenomena arise according to causes and conditions, and pass away. Be present.
• It is not our self that experiences awareness; it is awareness that experiences a self.   
• Nothing that happens is an isolated event; it only appears to be. The totality of life has brought this event about. It is part of the web of interconnectedness that is the cosmos.
• Whatever IS could not be otherwise.

Less Serious Stuff

• Birth is the leading cause of death.
• Death starts at birth, and is accelerated at dinner parties.

For Non-Buddhists, there would appear to be three theological options:

1) You can believe, as I do, that the universe is presided over by a being that is 100 percent malevolent but only 80 percent effective (which explains pretty much everything).

2) You can agree with logical positivists, who claimed that “God exists” is cognitively meaningless and hence neither true nor false. Or;

3) You can become a Unitarian.

From: Can You Prove God Doesn't Exist?
By Jim Holt

     But Seriously

Wisdom of Monty Python Flying Circus

In the end, the least imperfect prayer, in respect of both universality and succinctness, may well be the one devised by Monty Python:

''O Lord, we beseech thee, amen.''

From: The Other National Conversation

By Jim Holt

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullres=9C04E1D8163CF934A35752C1A9629C8B63

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